One of the most familiar episodes of someone cursing (i.e., calling upon God to injure or punish) others, is recorded in 2 Kings 2:23-24.  In the New King James Version of the Bible, these verses read as follows:

And he [i.e., Elisha] went up from there [i.e., Jericho] to Bethel.  And as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead!  Go up, you baldhead!”  So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord.  And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

A footnote to verse 23 in the New International Version of the Bible states, “By calling Elisha ‘baldhead,’ the youths . . . expressed . . . utter disdain for the Lord’s representative. . . .”  Likewise, in their book entitled When Critics Ask, Norman Geisler, Ph.D., and Thomas Howe, M.A., state on page 191 that what the youths did “was no minor offense,” for they “held God’s prophet in contempt.” 

Geisler and Howe surmise that the youths “were wicked young men, comparable to a modern street gang.”  And, on page 192 of their book, they speculate, “Elisha’s action was designed to strike fear in the hearts of any other such gang members.  If these young gang members were not afraid to mock a venerable man of God such as Elisha, then they would have been a threat to the lives of all God’s people.”

Gleason L. Archer expresses a similar opinion.   On page 205 of his book entitled Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, he states,

It was a situation of serious public danger, quite as grave as the large youth gangs that roam the ghetto sections of our modern American cities.  If these young hoodlums were ranging about in packs of fifty or more, derisive toward respectable adults and ready to mock even a well-known man of God, there is no telling what violence they might have inflicted on the citizenry . . ., had they been allowed to continue their riotous course. 

Archer goes on to theorize,

Perhaps it was for this reason that God saw fit to put forty-two of them to death in this spectacular fashion (there is no evidence that Elisha himself, in imposing a curse, prayed for this specific mode of punishment), in order to strike terror into other youth gangs that were infesting the city and to make them realize that neither Yahweh Himself nor any of His anointed prophets were to be threatened or treated with contempt.

Geisler and Howe concur.  On page 192 of their book, they declare,

It was not Elisha who took their lives, but God who alone could have providentially directed the bears to attack them.  It is evident that by mocking this man of God, these young men were revealing their true attitudes toward God Himself.  Such contempt for the Lord was punishable by death.  The Scriptures do not say that Elisha prayed for this kind of punishment.  It was clearly an act of God in judgment upon this impious gang.

Although Archer, Geisler, and Howe express the belief that the youths were killed by the bears, at least several other sources give no such indication.  The King James, New King James, and New International versions of the Bible all say the youths were mauled or torn by the bears.  Also, the translation by Strong’s Concordance of the Bible of the Hebrew word baqa that is used to describe the damage done by the bears indicates that the youths were ripped or torn. The word baqa does not infer injuries so severe that they would result in death.  If the youths were not killed by the bears, it is easier to accept the position that the punishment fit the crime, especially in light of the explanations that the crime was more than just simple teasing or name-calling.

Since it is not prudent to base any doctrine on a single biblical passage, the incident involving Elisha and the youths does not conclusively indicate that God will punish people who are cursed by those who have dedicated themselves to ministry for Him.